Umm, if you don't think the Feds under Eisenhower weren't watching things very carefully, you're just not noticing events.

We have a pretty good tool for watching government in this Internet thing, even if conventional news agencies don't see how to sell Kleenex by actually digging.

This government has forgotten the very reason for its existence.

> This government has forgotten the very reason for its existence.

Chuckle.

No it hasn't.

It has PERFECTED it.

The propaganda we receive in the government run schools is that "government exists to serve". This is a very valuable thing for the serfs to believe.

The reality is that government exists to serve itself. Always has, always will. The politicians, the bureaucrats, the politically connected vendors, the big donors - THEY benefit from government.

...and then government buys off enough voters with entitlements paid for with stolen money to buy a fake kind of "bigger gang than yours" political legitimacy.

But the REASON that gov exists?

Orwell said it best:

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently...

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”

Really if you look at it, from the time of Lincoln everything has been a downhill spiral.

The secession of the southern states was perfectly legal. Virginia actually the .

Sorry for the prior typo:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_in_the_American_Civil_War#Secession_convention

Virginia's ordinance of secession was ratified in a referendum held on May 23, 1861, by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451.[32]

The referendum was a perfunctory endorsement of the Governor Letcher's decision to join the Confederacy and was not a free and fair election. The Confederate Congress proclaimed Richmond to be new capital of the Confederacy and Confederate troops moved into northern Virginia before the referendum was held. The actual number of votes for or against secession are unknown since votes in many counties in northwestern and eastern Virginia (where most of Virginia's unionists lived) were "discarded or lost." Governor Letcher "estimated" the vote for these areas.[33][34] [35] Many unionists feared retaliation if they voted against secession because it wasn't a secret ballot and Virgina's pro-confederate government would have a record of their votes. Unionists who did attempt to vote were threaten with violence and even death on some occasions. Women and Virginians of African ancestry, slave or free, were excluded from taking part in the referendum. Had the referendum been free and fair, with Virginians of African ancestry allowed to vote, it might have been defeated.

The reaction to the referendum was swift on both sides. Confederate troops shut down the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, one of Washington, DC's two rail links to Ohio and points west. The next day, the Union army moved into northern Virginia. With both armies now in northern Virginia, the stage was set for war. In June, Virginia unionists met at the Wheeling Convention to set up the Restored Government of Virginia. Francis Pierpont was elected governor. The restored government raised troops to defend the Union. It resided in Wheeling until August 1863 when it moved to Alexandria with West Virginia's admittance to the Union. During the summer of 1861, most of the northern, western and eastern Virginia, including the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, were returned to Union control. Norfolk returned to union control in May 1862. These areas would be administered by the Restored Government of Virginia, with the northwestern counties later becoming the new state of West Virginia. In April 1865, Francis Pierpont and the Restored Government of Virginia moved to Richmond.

The real lesson of the Civil War is pretty words and paperwork be damned.

The position that wins out is the one that has the will and the means to enforce their opinion at the point of a gun.

So if you want a totalitarian state, you make the rules so complicated that no one can understand them, then you disarm the opposition. After that you arrest and imprision at will until you have a one party state.

Anyone who doesnt see we are more than half way down that path, has not been paying attention.

Anyone who doesnt see we are more than half way down that path, has not been paying attention. -- Isab at June 20, 2013 7:44 AM

I quite agree. The problem is that until we get about a third of the sheeple to get to be Constitutionalists, nothing will happen.

"The position that wins out is the one that has the will and the means to enforce their opinion at the point of a gun."

Quite true. Something you don't see discussed in Civil War histories is: what factors actually determined the outcome of the war? Most of the historians will tell you that the Confederacy had superior leadership, superior tactics, and superior motivation. (I dispute that last one, but whatever...) However, the Union had industry. And a big part of the antebellum Southern ethic was resisting industrialization. So when they suddenly had to develop industry to support the war effort, they were just way too far behind, and the congnitive dissonance was too much to overcome.